There's an odd justice to the idea that a place where animals once were slaughtered, sometimes with sledgehammers to their heads, is becoming a village of forward-thinking entrepreneurs, a poster child for new urbanism and a haven for enlightened vegetarians. But that's the evolution of the former Neuhoff meat packing plant, an assortment of old pink buildings in the North Nashville neighborhood of East Germantown totaling an astonishing 700,000 square feet. The complex was first built in 1906 and continued expanding until 1950. When it closed in 1977, it became a shell of a place, except for the abundant piles of trash—and we're talking dozens of semi-trucks full—inside its solid brick and concrete walls.
It became a haven for the homeless as well. In fact, when the current group of owners were deeded the property at the end of 1998, they found a few residents on the rambling 14-acre campus along the Cumberland River. There was a nude bather and an acupuncturist. And—judging by the withered five-leafed remnants—an agriculturist of sorts had made good use of the favorable lighting on the buildings' rooftops. Another frequenter, Jerry, still spends time there, and has even been appointed his own garage space in the former cattle intake area, where he parks his old red truck. As the owners see it, these characters are part of the city's fabric—people worth embracing, not nuisances to shoo away.
Most of the trash inside the buildings has been trucked away, and one of the buildings has been completely renovated, becoming a large, well-lit sort of lecture hall, where nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups and other outfits generally trying to improve Nashville's cultural or social spirit have been welcome to gather or party. Germantown residents recently convened to hear Michael Berkley of Growild nursery discuss landscaping with native plants. The Tennessee Environmental Council had its annual Green Tie patrons' party there, and the Cumberland River Compact meets there to discuss water quality issues.
The idea now is to discriminately develop the property like a kind of village—with mixed-income housing, retail, perhaps a restaurant and brewery, a healthy dose of artistic influence and, not least of all, an aim toward social good. Already, the site is home to the Nashville Jazz Workshop and the Nashville Cultural Arts Project (NCAP), the latter an in-house organization devoted to developing the kinds of programs and events that will help make the Neuhoff campus an integral part of the city's cultural life.
Internationally renowned artist Mel Chin, for example, is on the board of directors, both for the Neuhoff development and NCAP. His involvement speaks to the kind of look, feel and impact the owners are after. As a public artist, he specializes is merging the aesthetic with the social and has been involved in projects all over the world, "insinuating art into unlikely places, including destroyed homes and toxic landfills," as one bio of him puts it.
"How does the built environment affect the social is what I'm interested in," Chin says, adding that the Neuhoff developers are offering reduced rents for tenants who operate outreach programs in North Nashville.
"We want it all to be very organic," says Stephen McRedmond, whose family owns the project and who is the key Neuhoff developer. He says there's even a possibility that the campus could become home to an ecological research center, focusing on river and water quality issues. It is, after all, right on the Cumberland River. And, says Chin, "That's a big issue in the world today—water."
More broadly, the successful development of the Neuhoff site—located just six blocks from the Metro Courthouse—would become another important piece of Nashville's redevelopment puzzle. More specifically, it would be a substantial boon to Germantown. The city also plans a greenway along the river, right beside the plant. Park users would no doubt rather see the Neuhoff-to-be than the shadow of run-down industrial architecture that it is right now.
"You don't know how much I hope this thing works," says at-large Metro Council member Leo Waters, who just built, with wife Helen, an elaborate home a few blocks away in the heart of Germantown. He also worked at the Neuhoff plant as a teenager. "I'm confident that if anybody can make it work, they can," he says of the McRedmond family. "They have been so active and connective with the neighborhood. I think you'll find that most people in the neighborhood are supportive and are truly salespeople for the project."
Not least importantly, the development will mean saving—and resurrecting—a part of Nashville's seemingly dwindling historic landscape, albeit one that most people in Nashville have not only never seen, but have never even heard of. The Neuhoff campus is, to be accurate, a sort of concrete parenthetical on Nashville's cityscape—for most, it's out of sight, and for even more, it's out of mind.
"This architecture will never be built again," McRedmond says of the German-built industrial site. "And you only have one chance to save it."
Sadly—and stunningly, really—there is very little written history about the former Neuhoff Packing Co. and the site where it used to operate, in part because private companies simply didn't get much attention or media coverage during the early part of the 20th century. Neither the Metro Historical Commission nor the Nashville Room of the city's public library has much material on the place—a testament not only to its obscurity, but also to how little Nashville has traditionally valued industrial architecture.
There is, however, an oral history to be told by the few remaining Nashvillians who spent their working lives on the killing floor, in the maintenance shop, in the packing department or as management. They remember a busy, bustling and, by its very nature, grotesque operation that, at its height, employed just over 1,000 people.
German immigrant Henry Neuhoff started a meat packing plant with his brothers in St. Louis before moving to Nashville in 1897—Tennessee's Centennial year. He and his wife settled in the Germantown neighborhood, building a home on Sixth Avenue North in 1904. It still stands today, next to the Mad Platter restaurant, and is now home to attorney Bill Hollings.
Neuhoff incorporated his Nashville business in 1906, and by 1930, the company had expanded to Atlanta. He sold it Jan. 1, 1931, for a reported $2.5 million, plus inventory, to a national meat packing business, Swift & Co, which maintained the Neuhoff name. Neuhoff himself, meanwhile, went on to become a sort of early-day Monroe Carell, buying up and operating several parking lots in downtown Nashville. In that business, he was once heard to say, "I don't have to worry about inventory."
Neuhoff died in 1964 in Dallas, Texas (where his sons had followed in his meat packing footsteps), but not without having made a lasting impression on Nashville. He donated the land for St. Henry Church on Harding Road, and some of his descendants are in Nashville today, including great-grandson Henry Neuhoff, who moved here from Dallas in 1990. He and his wife Helen's 16-year-old son is Henry V.
"My husband was the same age moving back to Nashville as his great-grandfather was moving to Dallas," Helen Neuhoff says, adding that the Dallas Neuhoff business was sold in the late 1970s.
In Nashville, as well, Neuhoff Sr.'s former business stopped cold in 1977—one of several plants across the country that Swift & Co. shut down at the time.
The Neuhoff plant wasn't the only such operation along the Cumberland River in the first half of the 20th century and beyond. There were Werthan, Jacobs, the Baltz Brothers and others in the area, which is why Germantown at one time was known colloquially as "butcher hollow." Cattle and pigs populated pens and lots all up and down the area surrounding Second Avenue North, which was then essentially stockyards.
"The thing that strikes me is how much activity was going on there," says Waters, one of the youngest Neuhoff alumni, who grew up at the nearby Cheatham Place public housing project. "As a young boy, four or five of us would get together and roam around down there. I was always fascinated by all the things going on—cattle hollering, trucks roaring. I remember it being sort of like one of the things you saw on TV, the Westerns with all the cattle drives coming into Texas.
"Literally, hundreds and thousands of cattle and pigs came in down there. That whole area of Second Avenue was covered with pens."
As a 17- and 18-year-old, Waters worked summers at Neuhoff, known for being a fair employer with relatively good pay. He made $1.90 an hour, starting out in the maintenance department defrosting the coolers, considered one of the better jobs at the plant.
"On the killing floor, it would get to be 120, 130 degrees," he says, "and in the coolers, down in the 30s."
But he was later transferred to perhaps one of the worst jobs in the whole operation—the hide cellar. "After they skinned the cattle—someone would pull off the hide still warm, and they'd drop it down a chute into a cellar—the hide went into a vat, and we'd paddle it with brine. We'd pull them out wet, bloody, salty, everything else, then we'd fold them and store them for several months before loading them into the railroad cars."
Waters remains struck by the sense of community he found there, despite the harsh working conditions. "The thing it did for me is make me aware of the sense of camaraderie. The second thing is that it really motivated me to go to college."
Former Neuhoff employees remember that, before the 1960s, the plant, like society, was officially segregated, with separate dressing room space for white and black workers. (There remains at least one door inside the Neuhoff complex, reading "White Men's Toilet Room," that serves as a reminder of the nation's racist past.)
But, interestingly enough, the workers weren't so enthusiastic about segregation. They spent breaks together and felt a kinship. Today, the Neuhoff Association of former employees still convenes every two months at the Madison Family Restaurant on Gallatin Road. "We usually have between 30 and 80 show up," says former Neuhoff employee James Scott, who now owns Scott Sales Co. "Back in those days, people who worked together were a lot closer."
Former Neuhoff laborer John Rucker, who eventually became a personnel executive there, remembers that blacks and whites may have been separated before segregation ended, but the 88-year-old says that the business itself didn't discriminate based on race. "The black people had dressing rooms, and the white people had separate dressing rooms," he says. "But the blacks were some of the most skilled workers, and their pay reflected that."
In fact, the company was considered to be a top Nashville employer, Rucker says, perhaps not on par with DuPont, but certainly a close second. Rucker went to work there in 1934 and retired more than four decades later when the plant closed. In fact, he was literally the company's last employee, responsible for closing all the employment records for the business.
The plant's demise was gradual. Lena Doss and Mamie Flanigan both left at the end of the 1960s, after more than 20 years' service, when the Neuhoff plant stopped producing what were known as "table-ready" meats. "Some of the girls who had to keep working were transferred to the killing floor," Doss remembers, "and I wouldn't do it. I had my children grown and through school. You do what you have to do, but I didn't have to."
When the Neuhoff Packing Co. finally shut down, Rucker says, it "did not go broke. It just wasn't making the margins it was expected to make." While it would be almost impossible to confirm, Rucker, who had access to the company's financial records, claims that the net profit the year the plant closed was around $4 million. "The margin of profit in the meat industry was just very small, sometimes just 3 or 4 cents on the pound."
In the early '70s, he says, the plant's average weekly slaughter numbered about 10,000 hogs, 2,500 calves and 1,500 lambs. Not only was the meat sold, but so was the leather—and the blood, which was used in fertilizer and hog feed. "We used to say that we saved everything but the squeal," Rucker says.
The abandoned Neuhoff campus didn't get much attention during the intervening years. When Swift & Co. closed the operation, the Baltz Brothers bought the plant and the remaining inventory. About a decade ago, the Baltz family gave the McRedmonds an interest in the property as part of an agreed payment on debt. In 1998, the property came to the McRedmond family in full, with principal owners now being Stephen McRedmond, sister Anita Sheridan and brother Louis.
"It was a mess," Stephen says. "It was the biggest mess you'd ever walk through, but we were drawn to it, and we saw a reuse for these structures."
His family isn't the only one. While the site remains very obscure in the scheme of Nashville's offerings, it has its well-placed boosters. Among them is Mayor Bill Purcell, who occasionally shows up unannounced—and is welcome to, McRedmond says—to tour the buildings with visitors.
"The thing about it is it's just an incredible space, which is unlike any other space in the city," Purcell says, adding that he met with the McRedmonds just last week to get an update on the project. "They know that we're open to being helpful as much as we can."
To pull off what the McRedmond family has in mind will take a change in mind-set for Nashville's bureaucrats. That's because the mixed-use situation the developers envision would be impossible under the city's current, and sometimes illogical, codes and zoning rules. At one point a few months ago, for example, there was talk of building a school on a field at the Neuhoff site. Ultimately, though, the Neuhoff developers also see a restaurant and brewery. While children can be educated a stone's throw from a liquor-serving establishment, there's a Metro rule saying they can't be that close to a business serving beer. This is just one of many such obstacles.
But Metro planner Robert Eadler, who's working on design plans for the neighborhoods around downtown, says that the developers may be bolstered once the Metro Planning Department finishes its work. "If they want to do mixed use, then they might have to seek rezoning, and of course what will be important is if our plan shows mixed use."
Former worker Mamie Flanigan says half-jokingly that "they ought to just bulldoze the old ugly thing into the river." But at-large Metro Council member Chris Ferrell says there's a constituency in Nashville for saving what now amounts to industrial blight and transforming it into the kind of livable, workable environment the Neuhoff developers have in mind. "I think there is a significant amount of demand—people who want to live in an urban setting close to downtown with cool amenities."
In the end, Waters says, this is all about neighborhood and community, which explains why Purcell is so interested in the place. "Neighborhoods. That's his catchphrase," he says.
Waters adds that it will take some time for the property to develop into something that will see an investment return, and even McRedmond himself says it could be 10 years before it's completely finished. It may take that long, Waters says, to get people to rally around the concept of "industrial creative" use, as artist Mel Chin describes it.
"They've still got a big educational process," Waters says. "And there's no doubt they're still way ahead of the public. The whole urban movement in Nashville is ahead of the general attitude and tastes of the public.
"But you have to have those leaders and those idealists."
